Chapter 21 – Antecessum
August 18th, 2552 - (09:50 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach
Viery Territory, Eposz
New Alexandria, Csillagos éj Hotel
:********:
Sará's head hurt. It was a dull, throbbing pain at the back of her skull. It pulsed with her heartbeat, pulling her out of her sleep with a painful wakeup call. Even when she blacked out again, the sensation would break the spell and she would flutter her eyes open. After what she vaguely figured was her fourth time blacking out, the ache became too sharp to ignore and she managed to peel her eyes open for good.
The first thing she noticed was the heat.
It pricked her skin all over. She could hear something burning.
Her world was bright, too bright. With a wall right in front of her, she managed to roll over to see the other side. She was at the bottom of a staircase. Looking up, she saw the doorway to the exit. A blazing light stared back at her. Fires burned around the entrance. Electric components sparked on the ceiling as they caught alight. The flames were creeping their way along the infrastructure, slowly crawling towards her.
With a groan, she picked herself off the floor. She almost fell over, feeling her head swoon from whatever she'd hit. A twinge of worry made her reach a hand to the back of her head. She came away with a bloody palm, not much but it was there.
She tried to remember what had happened. Her memories came to her as hazily as her vision.
She spotted something on one of the stairs. Gray and black rectangles formed into the gray barrel and black handle of an M6 pistol. It wasn't hers but she was starting to remember whose it was.
Everything came back steadily then all at once.
The stairs.
The rooftop.
The soldiers.
The Banshees.
They were attacked. The last bit of uncertainty she had left was resolved by what she saw past the doors. Smoke emanated from somewhere out on the rooftop and in the flames directly in front of her were a pair of charred bodies. One of them she assumed was the agent she had tried to save. She guessed that the gun was his.
Save for the fires, she couldn't see anything else around. There was no sign of the Banshees. Hoping they had moved on but still wary of them, she took what precautions she could. She took careful steps up the stairs, never taking her eyes off the skies until she was able to reach the sidearm. She took it and looked it over. The gun was in decent condition unlike its owner. She didn't have any experience using one. She could read the situation well enough though to know that she would need to learn fast.
She took one last look at the rooftop then turned away. She made it as far as the landing before she stopped again. The glass wall at the back was still intact. Through it she saw that much of the city's cloud cover was gone. The same couldn't be said of the dogfights between the Covenant and UNSC that had continued unabated. She could now see far more of the lower city than she could earlier. One of the neighboring buildings caught her attention. Many of the others had fires and smoke billowing from them. That was nothing new. What made the structure stand out from the rest was the tail of a Pelican dropship that stuck out from its side. Like a dart that had found its mark, the dropship had lodged halfway into one of its lower floors.
Incidentally she recognized it by the location as well as the angle at which it had crashed. It was the same one that had nearly pancaked her after the Covenant attacked the roof. An inferno was spreading from it to the rest of the floor that it had crashed into like an infection. She remembered the people on it, especially the man that the soldiers had treated as some sort of VIP, and wondered if any of them had survived. The thought didn't last longer than a few seconds.
She got back to what she was doing and carried on down the stairs. She wasn't sure where she was going. She didn't feel the need to be sure either. So long as it wasn't the roof, it was an option.
She raced down five floors before finding out where her options ended. Halting on the landing between Floor 135 and '134, she heard alien babbling echoing up the stairwell from a few flights below. She immediately headed through the door to '134.
Its outer lounge was surprisingly normal. There were no chairs or tables thrown over, no blood spilt, no bodies burned. No sounds were coming from the corridors or rooms either. It was as if the Covenant hadn't reached this far. The sounds she heard on the stairs, however, made it clear that they were well on their way.
She moved cautiously down a passageway in search of anyone that could help her. She didn't dare call out to them but it soon became clear that she wouldn't need to. Not only had the Covenant not arrived yet, whenever they did, they were sure to be disappointed. She jogged through the other corridors to be sure of it. There was no one else on the floor. The doors were open, the rooms were empty and the people were long gone.
They at least had been evacuated. How many others had been so fortunate, Sará couldn't say but she certainly couldn't count herself among them.
Much to her horror, the sound of alien voices started becoming clear again. They were getting closer.
She looked for another way out. If they were in the stairwell that she'd used then they were sure to be in others. She didn't want to think of what would happen if she ran into the genocidal freaks with nothing better than a pistol. She acted on a solution as soon as it popped into her head. The Covenant knew how to use the stairs. What were the chances that they knew how to use the elevators too?
She didn't think they would be so unsubtle. She on the other hand could afford to be so long as she wound up in the right place.
Sará ran for the nearest elevator with a destination already in mind. A push of the call button gave her a burst of ecstasy that only pure fear could have incited. The button itself came online, meaning the lift itself was still online. The elevator was on its way. The loud bang of a boot knocking down a door reminded her that the Covenant were as well.
The open doorways of the rooms gave her plenty of opportunities for cover. She slid into the closest and waited, peeking left and right for signs of the intruders. They made themselves heard rather than seen. Items were tossed to the ground, objects kicked aside and doors opened with brute force in a clamor that quickly spread across the floor. Despite the fear that clung to her tighter than she did to her new sidearm, she mustered the courage to listen. The collection of different sounds helped her map out where they were and where they were going.
They were moving from passageway to passageway, checking rooms two or so at a time. There weren't that many of them. She supposed that was because they were spread too thin around the hotel. It was bad news for anyone still trapped inside and even more reason for her to get out while she could.
If she could.
She was about to find out as the nearby wall vibrated and the elevator chimed. Her ride was here.
She peeked out into the corridor again. To her right the area was clear. Looking left, in the direction of the elevator, she saw its doors open. Further down, a hulking figure stalked into a room. She saw blue armor leaning inside and a giant two-toed boot still anchored in the passage. It was slowly pulling back out, having heard the arriving elevator just as clearly as she had.
She ran for it.
The tall alien turned fully into the corridor and spotted her. She was faster and threw herself into the elevator before it could shoot. She rounded on the host of buttons for the different floors, spotted the lowest and pressed it. She was practically punching the one to shut the doors when she heard heavy footfalls pounding towards her. A deep voice growled something that she didn't understand.
Her assault on the buttons rewarded her with the hiss of the doors. To her they were moving in slow motion, unlike the titanic shadow that was rapidly approaching. They closed right as she glimpsed a flash of movement.
Her relief was stolen by a sudden crash against the elevator. The lift shuddered, an obstruction alarm went off and the doors, jittering, were slowly parted by reptilian hands. The fingers dug their way through the seams and pried them open. A gap was made through which Sará found herself staring into the enraged eyes of an Elite.
Her memories of Visegrád rushed to her mind, of her dad, of her mom. In that moment she realized that she was screaming and shooting.
Several shots struck the Elite, flaring its shields and punching its head back. The blows made it back off, letting the doors slide shut. The alarm ceased. The elevator resumed its descent.
She stood there for a while simply aiming at the doors, ready in case they opened again. Her heart was in her throat and so were her lungs. She could barely get a full breath in and exhaling left her unsteady.
After a minute she finally noticed the different floor buttons switching on and off as the lift went past them. Somehow the sight of it helped her to accept that she had gotten away, that she was still alive.
Her strength left her all at once. She collapsed to her knees and slumped against the wall. She put a hand to her mouth to keep from crying, figuring it would make her breathing even worse. She tried to focus on calming herself instead, keeping her pistol ready and considering how much ammo she'd used. The gun felt lighter so she set her best guess at having half a clip left. It had cost her that much to keep one Elite at bay. What could she possibly hope to do if where she was going turned out to be even worse?
She watched out for that as well. The descent was reasonably fast. She was already passing the '80s. The ground floor was less than two minutes away.
She got herself back up. Her legs threatened to give way all the while. She raised her gun and mentally prepared herself to make another run for it. Across the ground floor, through the doors and out to safety.
The time she had left to wait proved to be much shorter than she expected.
Without warning the descent came to a stop. The lights went out and so did her belief that she might survive.
She couldn't see what floor she was on or hear any alarms. Thinking that the power had chosen the worst possible time to go out, she let out a deep sigh. What little light there was came from the buttons. All but two glowed an inactive red. She closed in on the pair of green ones and saw that one of them was for making an emergency call. She might have pressed it if she had any idea who would even be there to pick up, yet alone help her. Instead, she reached for the button marked 'Manual Release'.
A single press and she heard locks sliding out of place. She reached into the the seam of the doors and pulled. The feat the Elite had tried its hands at had become easier for hers. She pulled one door aside and then the other.
The partial darkness of the elevator shaft greeted her. A little light snuck in through the seams of another set of doors that would normally open to one of the floors. She'd been about to pass them on her way to the next. Consequently, she had to tiptoe in order to get herself level with the ground. She was able to sneak her hands into the seams again and pulled, getting one of the doors to slide out of the way. There was room for her to crawl out.
Praying under her breath not to be cut in half, she pocketed her sidearm, grabbed ahold of the ledge and pulled herself through.
Hoisting her legs out from the dark, she stood up in front of a sign: '69'.
Just as she thought she would be okay, here she was over 60 floors shy of her destination. To avoid the despair that threatened to crush her for good, she set herself to finding another way out.
She turned, exhausted, and came face to face with a Grunt.
The thing was just a few steps away. It stared at her like it was surprised to see her there. Her reaction wasn't so different, so caught off guard by how quiet it was that she stiffened up. She spotted the plasma pistol in its hand and remembered where she kept hers.
Neither of them moved until the shock wore off and then they were suddenly in motion. Sará reached around for her pistol as the alien took a step back to raise its own. Both their eyes wide with fear, they let the other have it.
Searing plasma flew against hot lead.
Sará felt something hit her leg but not before she got off three shots, the last knocking out one of the creature's. The two of them fell to hands and knees. She watched horrified as her gun skidded out of her grasp. The Grunt's weapon tumbled within arm's reach of its owner. They locked eyes again before making another scramble. The Grunt reached for its gun but Sará swung out a leg and kicked it further away. Grabbing hers, she raised her pistol into its desperate face and pulled the trigger.
Click.
The alien broke out of its daze first and rushed her. It grabbed her gun arm and pushed it away to let a large hand slap her across the face. The blow sucked the breath out of her and as she fell back it kept ahold of her arm, yanking out its mask to expose a toothy scowl that parted in a mad yell. In a moment she knew the crazed thing was about to bite her throat out. As it dove for her, she put up two fingers and jabbed it in the eye. The alien reeled back and squealed in pain, giving her enough room to kick it in the stomach.
The Grunt flew back yet recovered faster than she'd expected. As she tried to crawl away it came screaming after her, arms wide, teeth bared, head vanishing in an explosion of blood and brains.
Sará didn't see where the shot came from, only that it sent the Grunt spiraling back. The body landed a meter away, everything above the neck pulped into a blue mess.
She looked around.
Behind her, her savior stepped out from around a corner. Still holding his shotgun, he moved with the bearing of a soldier. He certainly couldn't be one though. His outfit betrayed him as a chef and a rather burly one at that. He kept his gun trained on the Grunt as he swept past her to inspect it.
Two women emerged after him, both with pistols drawn. Immediately one of them struck her as familiar. The look on her face as she approached suggested the feeling was mutual. Sará remembered her from the time she'd escaped her room. She was Noah's mother, the manager of the hotel. While her name eluded her, Noah's mom didn't have the same problem.
"Sará?"
Sará was left stunned. It had been a minute since anyone had called her by her real name. "Yes-...yes, that's me." The memory was coming back to her. "Ugh, thanks for saving me, Mrs. Iris."
Both women kneeled beside her to check her out.
"Call me Erica." Noah's mom said, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's a little easier than trying to say the whole thing on the run."
"Oh, thank you Mrs.-, Erica."
"Don't thank me." She nodded over at the hefty man with the shotgun. He had finished checking out the Grunt and was collecting both fallen pistols.
"Who's-"
"That's Mitchell." Erica explained and pointed to the other woman. "And she's Turner. They're hotel staff I brought with me. Don't worry, you're in safe hands, right guys?"
Turner was investigating her left leg. She pulled back the burnt part of her jeans to gauge what was underneath. Sará winced at the yellowish red blot that was left on her shin. The adrenaline had worn off to the point that she could feel her skin burning.
"Don't worry, it's not too bad compared to your pants." Turner said. "You've got a first-degree burn. I can treat it once we get somewhere safe. Can't say the same for your jeans though."
"I'll live?" Sará asked half-joking half-serious.
Turner spared her a nervous smile. "Ma'am, as of late, all I can say for certain is that this specifically won't kill you."
Sará read between the lines. She nodded a thank you and let them help her back up. She could still take a step, albeit with some pain from the burns.
"I think it was alone." The man named Mitchell declared, coming back to them carrying her sidearm and her assailant's. "How is she?"
"Thankfully it was just a glancing shot." Erica said. "She'll be okay, well, better than she almost was before we got here."
"Good to know." He gave Sará an apologetic grin. "Also, sorry about the close call back there. I was right around the corner when you guys started tussling, but I couldn't get the shot until the last second."
Sará shrugged. "I'll take late over never. Thanks."
"This yours?" Mitchell offered her back her sidearm.
She looked woefully at the gun. "It's empty."
"Hmm." Mitchell reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a handful of clips. He removed the empty one from it, slid a new one home then handed it back to her with the rest of the ammo. "Here, you can have these."
"You're sure?"
Mitchell held up the weapon's alien cousin. "Trust me, I'm upgrading."
Sará took the clips and stowed them away hesitantly. "You know how to use those things?"
"He's an ex-Marine." Turner stated matter-of-factly.
"Meaning yes." Mitchell said, stashing the strange gun into his pocket. "Don't worry Ms.-, Sarah was it?"
"Sará."
"Right. You're in good hands."
Perhaps to emphasize his point, he squeezed his shotgun as he pumped a new shell into the chamber. The movement drew attention to the robotic prosthetic that she hadn't realized he was wearing. Seeing it on him helped her piece his story together, and for the first time since leaving the relay, she felt a little safer.
"Oh my God."
They rounded on Erica. She looked like she'd seen something horrible, like she was still seeing it. She was holding her datapad with trembling hands.
Sará watched the others quickly gather to look, Mitchell staying mindful of their surroundings. Their expressions reflected Erica's the moment they saw her screen.
"When'd that happen?" Mitchell asked hoarsely.
Sará went to look.
It was a camera feed. The angle was from a corner of a kitchen, the same one that, if memory served her correctly, she had run through with Noah during their escape. The place was dark. Even so, she could see a body lying against a corner wall. She couldn't make it out well. She didn't need to though to tell that, unlike a few others lying around, this one was human. It was a soldier. The head looked abnormally small and it was too obscure to tell why. There was a lot of blood.
"That's...Walker." Turner whispered disbelievingly. "Then where's-"
Erica pointed to the corner, to a part of the wall that had been blackened by an explosion. The epicenter turned out to be a small hole. "That's a vent, no doubt about it. See, Walker removed the covering, it's off to the side here."
"Which means..." Turner intoned.
"Which means there's a chance."
Mitchell nodded, grim but reassured. "He could've made it."
"Who could've made it?" Sará asked. "And who's Walker?"
"That's Walker." Erica said, pointing dolefully at the fallen soldier. "He was the commanding officer of the Army company that was garrisoned here in the hotel. I'd hoped we could've reached the two of them in time." She paused to shake her head at the sight.
"Them?" Sará questioned.
"My son, he was with him. He'd found him somehow before they came to Floor 71."
Sará took a step back. "Noah?"
"Yes. I'm sure you remember him; he helped you on your day out from those ONI agents."
Sará stood in awe and terror, awe at how Erica had the sharpness to figure out who her custodians were, terror in that her new friend might very well be dead. She wanted to think he'd gotten away. How could she be sure now that they'd found the last person he was with?
"Erica, I'm...so sorry."
"Don't be." She replied. "My boy's still alive. You see that vent? It looks like plasma did that. Those creatures wouldn't have attacked it without reason."
"They could've been trying to throw something at the lieutenant." Turner said.
"No, that's not what happened. If it did, there wouldn't have been anything left of him. Judging by that damage the explosion came from inside the vent, not outside. They were trying to get at something, or someone."
"Now that you put it that way, think he could've survived that?" Mitchell asked.
Erica's answer came after a long, thoughtful pause. "I think so."
"Boss?"
"I'm his mother." She said. "What do you think I'm going to say?"
"...We'll need to be careful if we go there. Those things that killed Walker might still be close."
"I don't think we'll need to go there." Erica pressed off the camera and in a series of swipes and stabs of the finger she pulled up a veiny schematic of the building. She zoomed in on a section of the hotel. "I can tell where that vent will lead. If I know my son, he'll try to get himself somewhere discreet and with a lot of hiding space."
She pointed to a certain part of the Csillagos. "There."
Sará couldn't tell what it was.
Mitchell could, however, and arched a brow. "The ballroom?"
"I've caught him hanging out with Daniel and Tommy there a few times, usually after they've snuck out at lunch. It always takes me forever to get them out of there."
"Makes sense."
"Let's get to the stairs. Sará, you should come too."
For Sará, she didn't need to be asked. She'd seen too much and known too much to scamper off without trying to help. She was done watching from the sidelines, and now with her ONI handlers off her back, she was free to do as she pleased.
Erica, Mitchell and Turner got going. Sará immediately tagged along, falling in with them like she'd been there from the start. She held her weapon close while they entered a stairwell and began their ascent, watching over her shoulder as Erica flicked through different camera feeds of the ballroom.
:********:
Duncan was glad to be far from the Galactic Cup Building. Their first objective for the day and they had come closer than ever to catching a bad case of friendly fire. Adding Berlin's death on top of that, the op was fast becoming one of the platoon's worst and oddest. They'd had harder days like when they lost Eagle and Echo or when they lost Deaks. Still, something about the last few hours troubled him more than anything else in recent years.
They departed from the Galactic Cup Building with a new convoy. As it turned out, the commander of the detachment from the 77th had been a lot more accommodating than anyone expected. He spared them four jeeps and their crew to add to the three they'd managed to save from their last run. Three trooper carriers carrying a full platoon and a Gauss Hog would do them some serious good. They had gotten extra backup with extra firepower thrown in as a bonus.
Their new convoy of seven vehicles was careening down the length of a westbound highway. It was the Staff's idea to use it. The route was roomier than the ubiquitous congestion of the streets, less hassle and more maneuvering room. Of course, it also left them more vulnerable to attacks from above. For the sake of their ever-diminishing mission clock, it was decided to be a better tradeoff than the alternative.
1st Platoon was at the fore in the three lead Hogs. Hector was behind the wheel at the front. He weaved in and out of lanes, passing around hefty trucks and wide shuttles at speeds that the rest of the convoy could scarcely match. More than once the Staff had to tell him to slow down from the passenger seat. At their backs, Duncan had to grapple with the turret. They were passing through faster than he could turn the gun. There were blind spots he couldn't check, ambush points that could easily be exploited by Grunt sabotage teams. At any moment a sticky could land on their hood or attach itself to a tire and he wouldn't be able to stop it.
He was on edge to be sure. His fear of getting shot in the back by a target he'd missed was well-founded, but was ultimately just that, a fear. The highway was unlike the surrounding streets. Whereas he could hear the firefights going on across the city, what he heard on the highway were merely the echoes. Beside the crunch and scrape of the convoy's wheels, there was no other activity nearby.
They were alone.
How long that would be for was anyone's guess. Duncan was hedging his bets at 15 minutes max. That was how long it would take them to reach the Császári Building. Under normal circumstances, with clearer lanes, they could have already been there. While on the one hand preferring that the Covenant hadn't come in the first place, he wished they could have at least done it after rush hour.
Through the blue circle of the turret's targeting reticle he swung left and right, sweeping it across car windows and beyond. He wanted to be certain the vehicles were empty. He was on the lookout for more than just threats. The cars were unoccupied for the most part. The few he found with occupants were left beaten or burning after both car and driver had been destroyed by plasma. Hector steered around them easily enough. However, the smell of burnt humans was so strong that it would overwhelm the filters in Duncan's helmet. It took a second time nearly vomiting for him to decide to hold his breath as they passed other wrecks.
With 10 minutes left before they reached the target building, Daz broke in over the communications. "Hey...Ep-7?"
"What's up, Whiskey?" Zack asked nonchalantly.
"About what you said back at the Galactic Building, about the 'prison' part, I hope you don't mind me asking but…"
Scanning the windows of a passing bus, Duncan tuned in more closely to the radioman's reply.
"Listen, let's just say I got into some drinking problems back when I was here a couple years ago. A night out in the city turned into a few days in holding at the NAPD. Turns out their HQ was the closest thing to a Hilton I could've afforded out here."
"Oh...okay. I mean, it's not really that crazy, it's not prison either. I can see it happening though."
"What, are you saying I don't strike you as a responsible person?"
"Actually, I think you said it better than me. Yeah, you're pretty on point."
There were a few laughs at that.
"That cut real deep, Whiskey-2." Zack joked. "Tell you what, next time I see 3 and 4, I'll ask them what kind of dirt they've got on you. We'll see who's laughing then."
"Probably me because those two morons don't have any."
"We'll see."
Duncan waited to the conversation's end to open a private channel to Zack. "I know why you said all that but...is it true?
"Yup, I've got a record. That was back when I was hanging out with LaGrange, you know, a little bit before his 'incident'."
"But that was years ago. Wait, you wouldn't have even been old enough under the law to drink. How would you-...oh, I get it."
He peered back to the passenger seat of the next Hog. There was Zack tapping a finger against his helmet in a 'now you're thinking' gesture.
"Just remember this, Ep-8. If you're old enough to sign up, to kill and be killed, you're old enough to take a sip. That's my philosophy."
Duncan panned across the shadowed windows of a passing apartment. "Yours and not the city's. You're not as free as you might think, Ep-7."
"Not in my book."
"And that's why you got booked."
Zack thought about it for a while and laughed. "Good point."
Duncan spotted a few faces behind the glass panels of the apartment. They were the same kind he'd seen before, mostly civilians with a few soldiers hunkering down on the inside. They couldn't afford to help them yet. Through the breaks in the buildings on his left he saw the magrail. It was forging on along its winding path through that section of the city. It thankfully wouldn't be too hard for the people in the area to hitch a ride at the nearest tram stop. From there they could reach an evac site.
"By the way, 7, I think its best you keep that prison stuff on the downlow from hereon. You-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Zack groaned. "Ep-1 and 2 already gave me the talk. Don't want anyone else finding out about a certain plea deal, or the fact that it wasn't just for me."
"For their sake and ours we need to let sleeping dogs lie." Duncan steered the gun towards a building coming on their right. He checked the rows of tinted windows for suspicious shadows and found quite a few. He stayed his hand however after recognizing the silhouettes for the treadmills and weight stations of a training studio. "While we're on that, you want to tell me what really happened back there?"
"...That's a cool gym."
"Stop trying to switch topics."
After a hesitant silence, Zack let out a long sigh. "Look, I don't know, okay? I just-...I don't know."
Duncan wanted to press him on it. However, his concerns were put on hold by the voice of Captain Eddies on the platoon's comms.
"This is 4-Actual to Ep-1, come in."
"Ep-1 here. What's going on, sir, I haven't seen your guys yet. Did you hit a roadblock?"
"You could say that." The captain replied, his uncertain tone punctuated by a noticeable pause.
"Sir?"
"...We're a short ways ahead of you. You're westbound on Highway 13, right?"
Duncan intuitively checked for directions and as they approached an overpass, he spotted a sign on the overhang: 'W 13'.
"That's a pretty solid guess, 4-Actual." The Staff said. "You stalking us?"
"Have to. Neptune hit me with the saddle so I've got to keep an eye on Bravo until we can ride this thing out. Look at your TACMAP. We're at the convergence of Almassy Street and Highway 13. Meet us there."
A new Nav point appeared 300-meters ahead of them. It was hidden within the depths of the rising cityscape.
"Sir, that's a good 500-meters shy of our target. We can't really afford to slow down. Can't we just push on through?"
"You can. That said, unless you want to risk your platoon getting shot to pieces, I suggest you meet us at the rendezvous and take it easy from there, at least until we're clear."
The Staff tensed. So did everyone else.
He got a curious look from Hector as he asked. "Clear of what, sir?"
Eddies took a deep breath. "We're looking at a mass casualty event, Ep-1. It's a slaughter. We're not sure about the area up ahead so we need you to back us up."
Duncan felt his mouth go dry. A mass casualty event? He'd already seen so much today. What else was there that could make someone like the hard charging captain hesitate?
"We have medics available, sir." The Staff assured. "If there's survivors, we'll see how we can help."
"No need, Ep-1. It's not people."
There were a few shared looks of confusion across the platoon.
"Can you clarify, sir?" The Staff asked.
"Come take a look. 2-Actual's the only other one in the area and he's saying his guys didn't do this either."
"Copy...on our way."
"What do you think it is?" Zack asked.
The Staff didn't bother answering. No one did. They were sure to find out as they began clearing the last 100-meters. Along the way, the regular sized buildings that had hedged them in gave way to a forest of high-rises. Each rose a little higher than the one before like an ascending staircase. They moved on to the tallest of the structures which abruptly ended at a spacious clearing. More of the rises arose on the other sides of it, hemming in the space all around like the fence of a giant garden.
It wasn't a garden precisely but a large roundabout.
Two streets converged on the highway here from the north and south. So did the maglev rail that they'd been following with another rail that crisscrossed it from the south, the two leaping high over the space as well as each other to trail on to the north and west. A small grass-furred knoll sat lazily at the center of the area. Decorated with a sparse cover of trees as well as the support struts of the railways, it loomed as an island of green amidst a sea of street lanes that twisted and spiraled around it like the eye of a storm.
But that wasn't all it was decorated with.
Most of the encircling high-rises had small coffee shops and restaurants built outside their lowest floors. Altogether they were setup like a plaza with each offering its own view of the mound, providing passersby with a gathering spot at which to relax and observe. If any had done so now, however, they would have found themselves staring at a very different sight.
The once peaceful looking locale was drowned in a lake of blood and buried in a hail of bodies.
So far as Duncan could see, they were almost all alien.
Elites, Jackals and Grunts were there. Looking closer, he was surprised to see the hulking yet unmoving frames of Brutes. The roundabout was unusually absent of cars and other vehicles, allowing the debris field of corpses to be strewn across the lanes as well as the knoll. It seemed to Duncan like a poisoned ant nest.
The convoy rolled to a stop at the outer edges of the roundabout. At the front, Duncan got to see everything in gory detail. The dead were divided up behind layers of smoldering UNSC combat barriers, trees, bushes and what portable shields that still flickered with energy. He thought he saw shreds of BDUs within the massacre and squinted at a support strut off to their right. There he spotted a soldier. The man was lying dead beside a turret that had been set behind a combat barrier. He was clutching onto a handle of the gun whose triple barrels had been ripped off. What was left somehow still spooled and rotated though nothing came out. In a few seconds he perceived several more soldiers that had also been lost within the masses.
"Jesus." Hector whispered disbelievingly. "What is this, the Alamo?"
"What was it, you mean." Nova corrected.
The Staff peeked out the scene. "They must've been overrun."
He scanned the area then looked off somewhere to their left, waving a hand. "Hey 4-Actual, heads up to your east."
Duncan turned that way as well. He saw another convoy sitting quietly on the southern route leading up to the roundabout. That, he figured, must have been Almassy Street. Their friends of 4th Platoon were there along with their own small contingent of Army troopers. Though they were mostly on their guard, one of them was hailing back from the passenger seat of the lead Hog.
"I see you." Eddies said. "We've got the buildings on the north and south sides secured. Can't say the same for the east and west, need you to lock them down for us. Once you give the okay, we can move up."
"Copy." The Staff turned to the platoon and their backup. "Gunners, search those rooftops and windows, both ahead of us and behind. Watch for movement. If you see anything, call it in. Ep-2, go check out that body in the machinegun nest. Look for an ID, I want to know who was here. 6, go with her."
"On it." Nova said as she hopped out the second Hog.
Rico went after her. "I got your back, Dama Roja, vamos."
The two of them stayed low and rushed ahead, keeping their footsteps quiet on the way to the nest. Duncan meanwhile took aim at the high-rises on the far side of the roundabout. They stood guard over the next part of the highway, requiring him to be thorough less he chance missing anything dangerous. He scanned their rooftops then panned down row after row of windows. He didn't find much aside from two things: blackened plasma marks and dimmed spikes that dotted the lower floors. They had burned, skewered and shattered the glass in multiple places. Stranger still, he didn't see many bullet holes around.
"What's going on here?" Rico asked.
Duncan snuck a glance at their two runners.
Rico was standing in a pond of purple-blue blood that had pooled between a Brute and an Elite, looking bewilderedly at either one.
Nova was close by, having crouched behind the machinegun nest to investigate the gunner. She gently reached into his BDU and pulled out his dog tags.
"Private First-Class Peter Sandoval, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion..." She exhaled defeatedly as she looked over the body. "145th Infantry Division".
A murmur broke out among the reinforcements that 1st Platoon had brought along.
"145th? What're those guys doing out here?"
"No, that can't be right. They're too far south."
"I don't know man; she's got the tags to prove it. Maybe they were out on patrol?"
"Looks like they got separated from everybody else."
From Almassy Street, Captain Eddies was looking out over the roundabout as well. "Hey Ep-1, I'm eyeing the bodies of some more troopers on the west side, six by my count. Any more on yours?"
The Staff counted those he could see. "We've got five on this side. Looks like they were trying to hold out behind the defenses here. Wait..."
As the Staff looked further, Duncan followed his gaze to a spot just at the base of the mound. There, the bodies of three more soldiers lay much closer together than any of the others. They'd fallen on top of a large sewer grate and by the bend of their knees they seemed to have folded in on themselves. Their postures suggested that they had died together, at the same time and in the same way. Upping his visor's magnification, he was able to sight evidence that supported his suspicions. Each of them had head wounds. One had a spike jutting from the back of his head. Steam wafted from the blackened plasma scar that had cratered that of another. The third in the middle of them was by far the most confusing. It was a female trooper, a woman who had met her end by a plasma bolt to the back of the head. Yet that wasn't the end of it. Several more spikes jutted out from her back. Whatever had shot them must have done so to add insult to injury, or perhaps out of spite.
He was leaning towards the second option. Moreover, a sneaking feeling told him that it had indeed been done out of spite though not for the trooper.
"We've got three more." The Staff said. "They look like they were captured."
"Execution?" Eddies asked.
"Roger."
"That makes 14." The captain shook his head as he looked around at the bodies. "This mess is anywhere from 250 to 300 dead Covenant. You're telling me 14 soldiers did this?"
"Not sure. They must've been a squad or two, maybe a small platoon. They could've given them a beating sir, but...not this..."
"What else could it be though? None of our guys were here. We didn't even know Brutes were in the city. None of this makes any sense."
It didn't make much sense to Duncan either, at least until he paid more attention to the three soldiers.
Looking closely, he realized that the carpet of bodies seemed to be at its densest around them. Though it was something of a hodgepodge, there were more Brutes on the north side of the roundabout than there were on the south. The same applied vice versa for the Elites with the Grunts and Jackals sprinkled in between. The arrangement of the dead Covenant gave him an impression of a massive meeting. Elites and Brutes almost never worked together. Because of that tendency he imagined that matters here had played out similar to what 1st and 4th Platoons had just done. Two different forces had converged on PFC Sandoval and his friends from two different directions. One was Elite-led while the other was Brute-led. They sandwiched the soldiers in between and nearly wiped them out. Three of their number were captured and brought out for execution. After that, Duncan was left to imagine his own scenarios.
The answer was obvious, but it also made little sense. There was no human force out here capable of doing so much damage. That narrowed down the list of suspects substantially.
There was no one here who could have killed the Covenant...except the Covenant.
So who had fired first? Why?
There must have been an argument. Whichever way it went, it didn't end well for either side. That much was clear by the spiked chests and blown off limbs of the Elites as well as the burnt faces and slashed open bellies of the Brutes. The Grunts and Jackals were probably nothing but bystanders that got caught up in the frenzy. They had ultimately fought alongside their leaders or were trapped in the crossfire.
His guess wasn't entirely unfounded either. He'd seen something like this before back on the brig of the corvette. While it wasn't on the same scale, the principle held. The Brutes and Elites were always at each other's throats. A major disagreement here must have finally convinced them to slit the other's. Even then, this time felt different somehow.
"It could've been Spartans, sir." Mito pointed out. "Think about it. The higher-ups love keeping those guys and what they're doing a secret from everybody else. We don't ever know they're right around the corner until they run us over and stop to say sorry. We should check-in with Command to confirm."
"No," Rico said. "Sorry Ep-9, but unless those Spartans only used Covie weapons, they weren't here. I'm looking at a ton of apes, gators, buzzards and turtles with plasma and spiker wounds. Environmental damage also matches." He planted his boot on the head of a fallen Elite in order to turn it over. "Hmph, one of these hinge heads even took a few spikes to the mouth. That doesn't look like something the Spartans would do. Their MO is quick and clean. This? This ain't it."
"What do you want to do, sir?" The Staff questioned.
Captain Eddies surveyed the roundabout and looked apprehensively at the next part of the highway. "Are the east and west sides clear?"
The Staff looked to his gunners who passed on a confirming nod. "They are, sir."
"Alright, we'll take it slow like I said. Once we're free, we'll speed the rest of the way to Császári. Mind the bodies, do your best not to run over any human ones."
"Got it. Ep-2, 6, pull back. We're leaving."
"What about the rest of the ID's?" Nova asked.
"Someone else will have to come along. Bring the one you have."
She accepted the answer for what it was and took the tags, patting their owner on the shoulder before she ran back with Rico.
Hector headed them off on their end while Eddies led the way from Almassy. The two convoys proceeded forward at a steady pace as they pushed into the roundabout.
The asphalt itself became hard to come by. The bodies of the dead Covenant were so numerous and spread so far out that there was no way around them. Instead, the tires went right over them. Both convoys waddled about and rocked awkwardly at random. Their engines warbled alongside a cacophony of snaps and cracks as they rolled over chests and crushed heads. True to their order Hector made sure to navigate a path around the human bodies in their way. That didn't make the trip any easier for Duncan. He had to clutch the turret with a vice-like grip just to avoid being thrown clear by every jerk and jostle. Operating the gun became virtually impossible. He could only turn it here and there to keep himself from falling over, no more.
As they came halfway around, the left side of the Hog came up high over the bulk of a Brute Chieftain. Duncan swung the gun to the right to compensate.
He almost didn't notice the moment his reticle flashed red.
He looked up.
The turret had been pointing to the roof of a high-rise passing them on the north. He retightened his grip and made a quick sweep with the reticle.
It flashed red again then back to blue.
He caught a brief glimpse of what he thought was a shimmer before it moved out of sight. He wasn't sure though. The light bouncing off the windows combined with the clearer skies made it hard to tell. The unique warble of propulsion thrusters reached his ear. He calmed down a bit. It must have been a Banshee or Seraph that had flown by. A trick of the light probably made him mistake it for something it wasn't. So long as it wasn't coming directly for them or anyone else, he was content not to add to their plight.
Even so, he continued to observe the building while the convoys eased out of the roundabout, not looking away until they were speeding down the highway.
:********:
The Császári Building came up rapidly as the combined convoys closed the last half-kilometer to the target.
The first Duncan saw was that the high-rises and skyscrapers abruptly ended. They gave way once more to another clearing in the urban undergrowth. The Császári occupied the spot, surrounded by a gently rising incline of gravel yards and polished lawns. The building itself reached a 30-story height which made it the architectural dwarf of the neighborhood. Duncan thought it looked like a giant cereal box. Its strip windows descended like rain from the top floor to the bottom. They were framed in by granite columns that sparkled in the light, giving the whole structure an air of regality.
The objective represented two priorities that required two platoons to address it. The first was the assortment of landing pads scattered about the yard of the building. A magrail passed through a tram stop on the other side of it, making it another good spot for the evacuation. The second priority was the municipal databases housed within. The building played host to New Alexandria's city council. As such, the reservoir of information stored within it presented a serious potential for a security breach. Municipal records of the city's freighter exchanges and interstellar trade charters could be used by the Covenant to locate other colonies, and in the worst-case scenario, Earth. As far as Duncan remembered, Article 1 of the Cole Protocol applied as much to planetary data networks as it did to ships. Experience, however, had taught the UNSC that civilians, namely government officials, were the least adherent to the protocol when it came to an invasion. They were too focused on trying to save their own lives and those of their families to care about purging a few systems, not appreciating how such neglect could endanger millions more.
Highway 13 took them on a straight shot to the building's main driveway. On the way over, they passed sights of destruction. Multiple Warthogs lay burning off to the sides. Army troopers on fortified street corners had fallen where they fought. The enemy fell with them, a host of scorched Ghosts and Revenants.
Grunts.
They were everywhere.
Their dead bodies carpeted the area around the target building like a blanket of orange armor and gray limbs. Everything else was simply mixed in. The tide of cadavers only ebbed at the sidewalks of Császári.
Duncan examined a group of them that had died on the approach to a machinegun nest. "Let me guess, they did this to each other too?"
"Doesn't look like it." The Staff said. "I'd say the defenses could account for the casualties. Probably close to 50 troopers were stationed here. They killed four times that many before they got overrun. Those guys we saw on the way might've been a part of their unit."
"Explains a lot." Eddies said. "Still don't see why there's so many Grunts specifically."
"Suicide charge maybe?" Nova added. "They do stuff like this every now and again when they get desperate, softens up defenses. This position must've been too strong for the regular assault teams. Explains why the body count's so one-sided."
"Maybe." Eddies paused to gaze at a cluster of dead Grunts gathered around a burning tank. "Keep your eyes out regardless. Some of them could just be wounded. If anything moves, feel free to finish it."
Duncan didn't need the encouragement from the captain for that. The whole scenario was rubbing him the wrong way. He counted close to 200 of the gas-suckers just lying around the place. Always looking out the corner of his eye he tried to keep as many of them in sight as possible.
While he swiveled the turret from left to right, Hector closed in on the end of the drive, bulldozing through a limousine that had been placed across the highway. The impact split it in half. Hector pushed on undaunted, ignoring the handful of dead Grunts that got sucked under his wheels and spat off to the sides. The other Hogs followed him through.
"Hard to believe I used to drive those things for a living." Hector chuckled. "They're too frail for me now. Where do you want to park, sir?"
The Staff pointed to the upcoming driveway. "Go straight up. We'll stop at the entrance."
Hector sped up the driveway which carved a path through the outer lawn before arcing past the steps to the front doors. The rest of 1st Platoon trailed after him. Behind them, as planned, their backup along with Eddies' 4th Platoon steered off the highway. They travelled along the smaller streets that branched to the left and right. Having already settled on a strategy, they began parking their Hogs around the sidewalks of the building to form a defensive perimeter. The ODSTs of 4th Platoon and over 30 soldiers leapt out onto the asphalt while 1st Platoon did the same at the entrance.
Jumping down from the turret with rifle in hand, Duncan peeked at their mission clock: '19:21'.
They had less than 20 minutes left before the first wave of evac craft hit the city. They needed to have the building greenlighted prior to that to give the trams enough time to arrive. Having that in mind, he bounded up after the others with renewed haste.
They raced to the doors and stacked themselves on either side of them.
The Staff peered in. "The lights are off. VISRs on."
Duncan and the others switched to VISR mode, changing the landscape from its natural colors to a world of yellow outlines and neutral hues.
The two squad leaders shouldered their way in first. Everyone else filed in after them.
They stormed across the wide stretch of the ground floor lobby, navigating through lounge areas as they swept the upper balconies and overhanging chandeliers for targets. They crossed under a central atrium where a skylight high overhead allowed some of the sunlight inside. The illumination fell primarily on several marble figures that towered several meters above them, standing atop a pedestal. There was a little girl clutching a teddy bear, a mother holding her hand and a father urging them onward. Beside him was a figure dressed in an older variant of an exoatmospheric suit. He pointed them forward to the doors with one hand while in the other he held a staff. At the end of it, a flag bearing the eagled emblem of the UNSC fluttered in a stoney wind. Duncan chalked it up as a monument to the early colonists. The grim irony wasn't lost on him as they went around it, how it was that the suited figure was pointing forward while they were advancing in the opposite direction.
"Ep-2, 8, receptionist desks on the other side." The Staff said.
Duncan spotted them at the opposite end of the lobby. He caught a nod from Nova and followed her lead.
They cleared the desks and ran behind one of them. Nova pointed to a workstation and covered Duncan as he took control.
Once again, the municipal codes came in handy. The receptionist's portal presented minimal opposition compared to what he'd found at the Galactic Cup Building. In a manner of seconds his universal master key had given him access. He sifted through appointment notifications and contact requests to find what he was looking for: the building's room directory.
The Staff stopped by to check in. "Where is it?"
Duncan scrolled through the list until he reached the one they needed. "Floor 21, Room 3."
The Staff signaled the others and pointed to the door of the closest stairwell. The platoon moved out again. Swinging the door out of the way, they hurried up the staircase. The flights of steps went by in a blink and soon they slipped out onto the 22nd floor. A long hallway awaited them as well as several dead Grunts.
They broke into two lines that strode along either wall, Mito and Rico taking point. They aimed at the bloodied aliens while they worked their way forward.
"There weren't any Grunts in the lobby." Mito noted.
"Didn't see them near the entrance either." Rico said. "Ep-1, what do you think?"
"Someone took them out already, probably the security staff. They might still be here. Listen out for survivors and watch out for those bodies."
They came to a stop at a door marked '3'.
Rico finagled the handle and pushed it open, peeping in with his rifle. "Room's clear."
"Move in." The Staff ordered. "Ep-4, 5 and 9, guard the door. Whiskey, check the floor below and the one above, make sure there's no immediate threat."
Hector, Yuri and Mito took up mutually supporting positions outside while Dalton, Daz and Reznik pushed ahead to the next stairwell. Everyone else went inside.
Duncan took stock of everything at a glance. Several observation stations made up the monitoring apparatus of the whole building, each with a myriad of screens and support systems. Five of them surrounded the two largest installations like a pentagon. Duncan went right for it. Nova shadowed him to the middle stations. They passed through a gap in the desks and plopped down into a pair of roller chairs.
He examined his side of the screens and noticed a sticky note hanging off one of them. A short alphanumeric code was written on it.
"Password's posted."
"Same here." Nova said. "Why don't you take a break, Ep-8? Purge that database, do some sightseeing when you're done. I'll handle the floor scans."
He peered over at her. "You sure?"
She was already typing away. "I saw how you did it the last time, it's not too hard."
"Hey-hey, don't say it like that. You're going to make me look bad."
"Like I said, go do some sightseeing."
Duncan breathed easier. The tension returned with a vengeance once he realized that the municipal camera systems of the whole city were at his fingertips. There was something to do, somewhere he needed to see. Nova, ever perceptive, must have figured that out before he did.
"Don't mind if I do." He said to himself. He ingratiated himself into the data servers with rapid-fire stabs of his fingers. He would handle the data then go on the hunt.
There was plenty that the people who'd staffed the place had forgotten to erase, if they had bothered to try at all.
Freighter registries, shipment manifests and worst of all, slipspace coordinates and routes were left fully intact. Sure enough they hadn't even tried. After swimming through a sea of civic records he initiated a selective purge of the database. One by one the different streams of information were compiled and erased, one line of code after the next. Doing it for as many years as he had helped him turn the final checks into a perfunctory exercise. In accordance with the protocol, he downloaded data scavenger software from the designated UNSC web address and let them off the leash. They scoured the building's systems for whatever information remained. Decades of thorough refinement by UNSC tech specialists enabled them to sniff out echoes and residuals like the digital bloodhounds they were. They worked fast and after a few seconds they notified him that the deed was done. Not leaving it up to software alone however, he used a triple-screen check to ensure no security backups remained. There were none. He sat back satisfied, having rendered a whole building protocol-compliant in under a minute.
"Database is wiped, sir." He declared.
The Staff nodded approvingly. "Good. Now we only need 2 to confirm the interior."
"Not so easy, is it?" Duncan jeered.
Nova didn't give him the time of day and kept at her work.
He remembered what she had told him earlier and looked again to his station. He tuned into the municipal surveillance systems and began picking his way through the district directory. At first, he gravitated to names and sectors that he recognized.
He pulled up Traxus Tower.
Different feeds provided him with different angles of what was unfolding there. Each in their own way told the same story. Troopers of the 145th Infantry Division that were stationed there were being pressed by the Covenant.
Just beyond the cargo port on the east side of the tower, several companies were holding defensive positions in the outer plazas, vistas and esplanades. An equal number of Covenant were pushing against them from the direction of the waterfront. The heaviest fighting was being waged at the loading dock around the port's three titanic cranes. There a company's layered defense was being battered by waves of Phantoms and Spirits. The dropships were swooping in over the opposing hills and across the channel. They fired on the soldiers below while they descended low enough to open their drop bays. Covenant troops spilled out of them. They landed on the edges of the dock, reinforcing their comrades that were steadily gaining a foothold there.
Defenses on the northern coast were hardly better. More companies had positioned themselves atop the citified plateaus that sloped down to the shore. From multiple levels along a half-kilometer front they were firing everything they had at the enemy. A substantial force of Covenant had made a landing on the beaches of Alexandria there. Their ranks rivaled those shooting at them from above. A consistent spray of rockets and machinegun fire stalled their advance, blasting dozens to craters and cutting down whole swaths of the invaders. The denting of their numbers hindered them but couldn't prevent their slow progress.
Multiple Wraiths had landed as well. Their hefty carriages shielded Elites and Jackals behind them. The more suicidal Grunts screamed and shot their way forward, toppling and tumbling over one another like bullet sponges. Not that they seemed to care. Those coming behind them simply ran over their comrades to repeat the pattern, filling the air with shouts and plasma bolts. Back above, the troopers made room for several small Scorpion units to pull in. Their cannons took aim and unleashed thunder across the beaches. Grunts were sent flying. Wraiths stopped in their tracks as shells struck their armor or even passed straight through in the unluckiest cases. They returned fire with their mortars. Before they could sail to their targets, shadows descended on the troopers from above. Seraphs shot in from the clouds on steep dives. They set their sights on the Scorpions, assailing them with their heavy plasma cannons to which the former's turret gunners could muster only a meager response. One of the Seraphs dove deeper than the others. It banked off at the last possible second while its luminous payload arced towards the plateau. In an instant Duncan watched two tanks and a full platoon vanish in a roiling wall of plasma that cut through the lines like a knife. The survivors were still plentiful. They maintained their defense even as the first mortars began landing around their positions.
"That doesn't look good."
Duncan felt a hand on his shoulder. He saw Rico looking over him at the screen.
"Hey Ep-1," He said. "Might want to look at this. Traxus is taking a beating right now."
The Staff came over as well.
He shook his head as a second plasma charge carved another path of fiery destruction across the plateau. "They're trying to break through at those hills over to the west. The fighters are just laying down cover for them."
"What happens if they make it to the hills?" Duncan asked.
The Staff shook his head again. "They'll be able to get around those defenses...and start making their way to the tower."
"Didn't you say something along the lines of, 'if we lose Traxus, we lose the city'?" Rico questioned.
"I did..."
A heavy silence fell over the room. The Staff took one last look at the screens and left to check on Nova. Rico went away as well, probably to try putting his mind to something else.
Duncan journeyed on. He searched through the camera feeds that he knew by their names to be in more southerly locations. In doing so he could bring himself closer to the Csillagos hotel. He checked them one sector at a time.
At one point he stumbled across cameras that showed the buildings west of the starport. In the streets he found the exact opposite of what he'd seen at Traxus. He counted at least several companies of the 109th Infantry Division pushing westward through the area. What scanty Covenant forces there were were being pushed back. Whether it was a pesky Elite that had been spotted by a tank on a street or a pack of Skirmishers that thought themselves faster than a group of Warthogs, they were shown no mercy. The enemy was being blown to pieces, run over and gunned down at every possible avenue and boulevard. The troopers in turn were moving through, creating a stable buffer zone between the starport and the surrounding area.
He liked the look of it. If they were establishing a strong perimeter then there was a high chance they were getting ready to open the starport as an evac site. That could only spell good news for their operations going forward. It would be like adding several new pumps to a sinking ship.
Things were going even better the further south he went. He happened upon a scene of an armored column in motion. Seven Scorpion tanks were driving over a bridge that arched over one of the city's main riverways. A band of ODSTs were waiting for them on the other side. By how they strolled so leisurely about in the streets, streets covered in Covenant dead, he figured they were troopers from the 22nd Shock. Having achieved their latest objective, they casually hailed the tanks over as they crossed into the west side of the city.
In short order he reached a feed that he remembered from experience to be near the Csillagos. Marked 'Herzl Heritage Center', it appeared on his screen as a grainy image. The sound was clear, however. There was a deep rumbling noise. It resolved into the sound he was used to hearing from burning buildings. The image eventually caught up and the resolution recovered. Blurry shapes were clarified into rows of nearby windows, streets far below and in the right corner of the feed, flames.
There was an inferno somewhere in the Herzl Building. He panned the camera to the right. The fires grew brighter as the view shifted further until he found the source.
Only a few meters away, the tail of a Pelican was sticking out from a floor of the building. The dropship was completely consumed in the conflagration. It must have crashed there. He noticed that it had done so at an upward slant. He followed the direction that its tail was pointed to track its flight path.
It was a very brief flight path.
The building where it must have taken off from was a short distance away. It was a skyscraper, the largest in the immediate area, and it just so happened to be exactly the one he was looking for.
It was the Csillagos éj.
He'd finally found it, though not in the condition he'd wanted to. Smoke was rising in thick black pillars from many of its floors. Some of them were completely engulfed in flames. Small dots were maneuvering in the skies above the building. He zoomed in. Greater magnification revealed them to be dropships. Covenant dropships. Phantoms passed lazily by the structure on their way to other parts of the city. A few found their destination in the hotel itself. He watched two of them make a slow descent towards the rooftop, landing on it like flies on food.
A wave of fear and rage crashed over him. Tears welled up that he could barely hold back.
Erica, Noah, were they still there?
Were they still in the middle of all that?
He didn't know, not for certain, and it was that uncertainty that squeezed at his throat until he couldn't breathe. He used his shaking hands to flick through more feeds, searching for any that could give him a closer look. Most were offline, destroyed. None of the remaining cameras in the surrounding buildings proved capable of giving him a better view than Herzl. That wasn't to mention that the cultural center's feed was partially obscured by the fires of the Pelican.
Just as he was about to sink into a sea of his own despair, he discerned a separate function in the camera systems. It was an emergency locator. Each camera seemed to have one in the corner of its feed. If he were to guess, it was some sort of proximity alarm to help first responders reach disaster sites quickly. The Molnar Bombing a couple years back had probably played a role in its implementation. Now, staring at it, he realized that the old bombing was on the verge of saving a few lives.
All the buildings in the area were picking up an SOS beacon from the same place: the hotel.
Someone inside was calling for help.
Whether that meant anyone was still alive or not, he couldn't say for certain. Nevertheless, it indicated that someone had been sober enough and desperate enough to activate it. While the other buildings had gone dark, the Csillagos was trying to hail whoever it could.
He immediately moved to contact the location when Nova made her announcement.
"That's the last of the floor scans. The building's secure."
"Good to hear." The Staff said and opened a new channel to Captain Eddies. "Ep-1 to 4-Actual, we've got an update. Császári's clean."
"Copy that." The captain replied relievedly. "I'll comm the Maglev station and give them the greenlight. Stay vigilant on your end. We've got 13 minutes before the 83rd pulls in. That leaves plenty of time for things to go sideways."
"No problem, sir. We're ready."
"I wouldn't be so sure." Nova said. "The place is clear but something still doesn't feel right."
"Explain." The Staff said.
"We've got dead Grunts on Floors 5, 17 and 21, the one we're on. From what I can see, they were killed by the building security, not that they fared much better. It's weird either way."
The Staff stepped closer to her station to eye the different feeds. "What's got you spooked, Ep-2?"
"Just my opinion sir, but if you ask me, these security personnel fared way better than they should've. I can tell by the armor that they were NAPD, big guns and all, but they don't have the numbers or positions to explain how they killed three times as many Grunts. It's...off, real off."
Duncan managed to sneak a call while they talked. His hopes rose when it went through then crashed and burned after an answering machine picked up. He tried again. And again. And again.
The repeated promises of the answering machine to have someone get back to him was unnerving. Why was no one picking up? Was there no one left to answer?
He tried to use Erica's number only for the digits to seemingly rip themselves out of his memory. Her number, how could he forget his own wife's number? But he had. It was escaping him even as he put all his mind to it.
Maybe it was stress. He attempted to calm himself down. What the Staff said next worked completely against that.
"Ep-1 to 4, 5 and 9, double-check those bodies in the hallway. Whiskey, you do the same if you find more-."
"Sir, I'm seeing movement on the surrounding buildings." Nova cut in.
The Staff leaned over her. "Where exactly?"
"Rooftops. They're staying out of sight. Whatever they are, they don't look friendly."
Duncan turned to look as well.
She had different feeds divided across her screens. All of them showed the buildings outside. Like she'd said, there were quick flashes of movement on some of the rooftops.
"Ep-1 to 4-Actual, we've got motion on the tops of the buildings outside your perimeter, over."
A concerned Eddies answered swiftly. "What kind of motion, Ep-1? Friendly or unfriendly?"
"Not sure, can't confirm yet."
"Then confirm asap. We've got a tram full of civilians inbound. They'll be here in the next 10 minutes. I need to know before then if I need to send up some of my snipers."
"Understood." The Staff looked to Nova. "Can you get a closer look?"
"I'll try." Her fingers worked feverishly to navigate the keypad, bringing up new cameras and new angles by the second.
Meanwhile the Staff called again to the others outside the room. "Ep-1 to Ep-9, can you give me an update on those bodies?"
:********:
Mito couldn't give an update. He wasn't sure yet.
Hector and Yuri had joined him in strolling over to the handful of Grunts scattered across the corridor. Mito went to check the farthest one.
The alien lay face down on the ground. Though blue blood stained its face, it was still wearing its mask. He inched closer and prodded the thing with his boot.
There was no reaction.
"Anything?" He asked.
Without hesitation, Yuri kicked his in the side of its head. "Nope. Either its heavy sleeper or something blew stomach out."
Hector crouched down to check on his. "No, I don't think this one's a problem."
"Hmph." Mito was of the same opinion. The threat was neutralized.
Then he felt a strong urge to double-check. He turned to the Grunt in front of him and gave it a light kick to the stomach. It didn't move so he tried again, harder. The blow struck it powerfully enough to make the body roll over. It remained limp but he noticed the giveaway.
The gas mask hadn't come flying out.
Whereas a kick would force trapped air out of a normal corpse, this one had no reaction. The mask hadn't budged. Then he noticed why.
The jaws were clenching shut.
The thing was holding its breath. It was still alive.
He immediately aimed at the head and put a round through the temple. The Grunt let out a sharp squeal as it finally dropped the act, becoming what it was pretending to be.
"Hey, this one was alive!" Mito warned. "Check the other-"
Alien shouts filled the corridor as the last two Grunts jumped to life.
One fired point-blank at Yuri while the other leapt at Hector, claws bared. Yuri quickly rolled aside and came up to give it a three-round burst to the face. As it toppled back, its partner received a powerful kick to the stomach that sent it flying away. It crashed to the floor in an anguished cry. Still dazed, it spotted a plasma pistol and tried to crawl for it. Hector strode after it, draining his SMG into the creature until it stopped moving.
He gave it another kick to the ribs for good measure, knocking it away from the weapon. "That's what you get for-"
Gunshots alerted the three of them to a set of windows in the passageway. As they ran over, the sound of gunfire was challenged and ultimately overwhelmed by a wave of bloodcurdling shouts.
They reached the view in time to see the outside defenses being put to task. Part of 4th Platoon and the Army troopers were fighting from the sidewalks, shooting from behind their Hogs at the oncoming threat.
Ahead of them, a horde of dozens of Grunts was on its way. They dashed down the highway screaming at the tops of their lungs. Each one had an active plasma grenade glowing in either hand, holding them over their heads so that they looked like an angry rave. More gunfire and more shouts joined them from out of view, hundreds more echoing from all sides of the building. In moments, the dozens of onrushing aliens had transformed into a mass suicide charge.
Mito shuddered at realizing the situation firsthand, that the Grunts in the building hadn't been the only ones pretending.
Antecessum – Advance